The First Night
by NeapolitanGirl
Summary: PostDoomsday OneShot. They say that nothing's worth winning without a fight, but frankly, she wouldn't complain. Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. And as a certain French courtesan once said, the Doctor's worth the monsters


_How time flies when you're studying for your A-Levels and you think you might fail. It's been a while, purely because I found myself curiously distracted by real [sic life. So how are you?_

_This here is my last chance at writing a post-Doomsday reunion fic without feeling like I'm denying RTD. It's most likely that I won't write something like this ever again, unless I begin it soon. I don't like messing stuff up too much if it's already been "seen onscreen". Not that I'm slagging off the episode 11 series 4 twist. No, Sir._

_On that note, has anyone else seen the knew trailer with you know who in it? It's at the start of Cloverfield, but it's probably on YouTube as well (most likely illegally). Check it out. Series four looks bloody marvellous, even if we do have to put up with Catherine Tate. Unlike Cloverfield, which was awful._

_Anyway, to really get this, you're going to have to realise that every day of your life (but one) is the first day of the rest of your life. Which doesn't mean much unless you actually want it to. If you love your life, it's exciting, if you hate it, it can seem like the worst thing in the world, and if you're the kind of person who wakes up in the morning and wants to make a change it can give you a little piece of hope. Which is all well and good, it's just that there's just a limited number of times anyone wants to start their life again from scratch._

_Incase you're wondering, no, I don't talk like this in real life. If I did I'd end up in the loony bin._

_T for swearing and general angst-ridden-ness. That ends well._

_If I owned Doctor Who, I wouldn't put the trailer in front of Cloverfield. Or The Golden Compass like they did with VOTD (ouch)._

_Whatever. I'll try and dial down the life lessons next time. And write a shorter Author's Note. Enjoy._

----------------------

The car jolts violently and Rose decides sluggishly this will probably be the longest night of her life. Her eyes sting, her limbs ache and the Jeep's broken heating means she's colder than she can ever remember being before, colder even than that night when she and Mickey were kids and decided it would be romantic to run away from home. She was right in the end, running away from home _was_ incredibly romantic. Just not with Mickey. And not on New Year's Eve.

She's bundled next to her mum, Jackie's head lolling on her shoulder, stuffed into the back seat of what she'd find out was an ex-army car if she cared enough to ask. She can imagine it at war, a different kind to the one she's fighting now, trundling through deserts like it trundles now down these dark, foreign roads, unnoticed by a world which now seems so detached from everything she's ever known.

In so many ways, it is. Did you know they don't have Nutella here? And that the Gallagher brothers became butchers, so Wonderwall hasn't been written? They never had the Vietnam War, the sabre tooth tiger still exists, no-one's even considered climate change, and, as far as she knows, there is no Doctor. And she's looked. Oh, how long, and how hard she's looked.

Rose supposes he knows how long she's been in this world, but perhaps not. Perhaps he really just didn't think to ask. Or maybe that's something else he didn't have time to mention. He knows she's working, and at Torchwood, nonetheless (she can't help but wonder why it didn't that worry him, after everything that it did to the pair of them), but he didn't ask if she was alright. He didn't ask if she was happy, if this world made her happy, if it had ever felt like _home_. Maybe it's best he didn't ask- he wouldn't have liked the answer.

No-one's speaking to her, and she's glad they're giving her peace. Jackie's sleeping, the man she can't _quite_ call Dad is driving, and Mickey's making a conscious effort not to look at her. He keeps sneaking glances, checking she's not crying, and she pretends not to notice. She barely _does_ notice. She is, in the most ironic way possible, in another world.

She'd sooner die than tell Mickey, Pete or her mum that she'd still have given them all up in a second, or that in her head she's still in his blue box, swirling with her cosmic madman through space and time, forever and ever, even if it means losing everyone and everything the old Rose cherished beyond measure. And it's incongruous, really, seeing as she knows that the old her is almost definitely the Rose Tyler that the Doctor first fell in love with. She's not paranoid enough to think that he doesn't still love her, even though she'd do literally anything to hear him say the three words- she's perfectly aware now that love changes with time. She _did_ love both Doctors, after all. Even if her first one was a grumpy northern git with big ears and a fixation with a leather jacket.

She has to gulp back a hot rise of bile at the memory. It doesn't feel like she's his Rose Tyler anymore, and because of what's happened, it didn't feel like that man on the beach was the one that held her hand. She has, quite literally, lost her life.

Mickey clears his throat, and Rose looks up at him, careful not to disturb her mum's head by moving too quickly.

"Uh... are you-" he winces at the stupidity of the question. "Are you alright?"

She looks him in the eye, and he winces again. She takes pity.

"I think so." She isn't...

"Good." ...and he knows it.

They sit in silence for a while, Pete scarcely breathing, uncompromisingly still in the front seat, clearly too tense to get involved, looking rigidly out of the windscreen. Rose gazes out of the window and sighs.

_Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. You just wish it didn't hurt so much._

----------------------

Paris, even at night, isn't _nearly_ as glamorous as it was in her dreams. She assumes it never could have been-she'd been six, after all, and dreaming of being a ballerina. Having her two front teeth seemed glamorous. Eventually the dreams had changed, and so did Rose's imaginary Paris, going from some kind of nineteen-twenties fantasy world to the place where you had to really throw yourself in, use the wrong verbs, eat the food and end up kissing total strangers...

Well, something like that.

She's tried the food, mixed up the verbs like nobody's business, and as for the kissing... well, she thinks his name was Jacques. She _thinks_. Her GCSE French was barely a pass, and anyway, the accent made it hard to tell.

The city seems a lot smaller from the top of the Eiffel Tower, she notices grudgingly. The river winds through the city like black ribbons across a golden grid, the street lights reflected, radiant, sprinkled like star dust across a very knowingly beautiful cityscape. More than any other city she's visited, on any planet, in any universe, Paris seems like it's talking to her, as if it knows what's running through her head and pines for it just as strongly as she does. It's very romantic, and appears to know it.

She weaves her pointlessly thin chiffon scarf around her fingers and taps them absently on the cold metal of the railing, abruptly wondering if he ever thought she was beautiful.

The open air part of the observatory is empty tonight, which is quite surprising, considering the fact that it's New Year's Eve, and it should be full of drunken tourists who want to see the Paris night sky. She'd rather hoped it might be. Instead there appears to be the meekest gaggle of stylish French nobility and bureaucracy, standing and talking inside the tower- men, women and even a few children ringing in the new year in the most Parisian way they can, intelligent people getting drunk and forgetting for one night that perhaps their lives, the here, the now, truly _is_ all there is.

She sighs and turns, holding onto the banister with light fingers, listening to the soft jazz and white noise of aristocratic French chatter that hums through her head like the buzz of an insect. She knows there's something wrong with her, something in her head that's stopping her from feeling happy, or alive. But she's not depressed, despite what her mother and therapist assure her, and it isn't a feeling of abandonment, or even really of sadness. She came to Paris on her own, she'll leave on her own, and she's done the very best job she could have done, considering that the French version of Torchwood's full of angry idiots.

Perhaps it's just the feeling of disillusionment? The infamous walls might, she thinks, finally be coming down. She might be starting to feel again. She only regrets what she thinks she's found now she can see past her reticence.

Her back to the city, the railing supporting her weight, she closes her eyes and pretends she's somewhere else, with some_one_ else. Perhaps that she _is_ someone else? As hard as she tries, she can't quite see it.

Maybe she doesn't want to be anyone else? Perhaps she wants to be Rose Tyler, living Rose Tyler's life, feeling exactly as Rose Tyler feels because things might get better if she just has the chance to make them so. If she could change it then she would- she'd go back and _not_ make the same mistakes again, _not_ let her memories feel like they're playing with her, _not_ let the sun go down for the final time, make him really hear her, even if there's a risk he won't reply. Even if she's only met with silence. She's not sure she'd even mind that anymore, so long as he was there and listening like he used to be, and not just a figment of her imagination or an unfair dream she never wants to wake up from.

She leans back, listlessly, recklessly, the scarf blustering frantically in the wind, pushing upwards, her toes lifted from the floor, now sitting on the metal railing that has been designed so meticulously to keep her safe. She feels a little thrill of defiance twinned with something she can't name and the feeling of the wind rippling through her hair, the scarf tugging at her fingers. The sounds of the street below are muffled by the distance and the adrenaline thrumming in her ears, cancelling out the dreaded noise pollution she's felt inflicted with for so long, and she thinks she might feel just a tiny bit more liberated, like she might breathe again sometime soon, even if she can't now. The wrap tugs free from her hand, drifting gracefully away in the wind, and even though she isn't really bothered, she can't stop herself from opening her eyes.

She looks straight up and gasps, laughing, all thoughts of the scarf forgotten. The stars seem so much closer from up here, like if she shouted to the sky something out there might hear. She's impressed with herself, with her daring, with how breathtaking her disobedience is, and she imagines herself as one of those burning stars, a thousand thousand miles from the Earth, looking down at herself, gazing on in wonder at how perilously close she's coming to-

"Mademoiselle!"

_Damn._

She closes her eyes again, trying to block the voice out, hoping it isn't her that's being spoken to so sharply.

She's been here before. She just doesn't want someone she doesn't know to screw it all up again.

Life is, after all, very long when you're lonely.

"Mademoiselle! Please!"

She pauses, breathing in the cold night air, wondering dangerously whether or not she could just keep leaning back, further and further, whether the voice in her head that urges her to jump, to _fall_, will see reason, or whether something else, something less internal, will save her (or damn her, she hasn't quite decided which it would be yet).

_Please, just leave me._

"Mademoiselle!"

And then just as suddenly as the urge came, it's gone. The strangest feeling sets in, like time itself is humming to her that she should wait for something, that she isn't finished yet. Not today. Perhaps tomorrow. But never today.

"Mademoiselle, you must come down from there, it is simply not safe!"

_You're kidding?_

Rose opens her eyes reluctantly, seeing no other choice, and lowers herself down from the railing, the wind still sweeping her hair around her shoulders, hardly feeling the cold, despite her thin chiffon tea dress. The serving man is staring at her like she's gone mad, the arm that carries his tray of empty champagne glasses quivering from something more than chill, the empty vessels clattering violently. She smiles at the frenzied expression on the his face, imagining what he would have had to say if she'd...

"You must now come inside. The... weather is too cold, you cannot stay out here."

The countdown abruptly begins from inside the observatory's glass doors, and the waiter jumps, full of all the nervous kinetic energy and fear that she knows she should have been feeling.

"It is almost midnight, the other guests will be wanting to wish you a happy New Year."

"_Eight, seven, six..."_

Rose smirks, and the waiter blushes, but doesn't move. She can almost feel his heart beating rapidly through the tension in the air between them, a current of worry beaming from him in a way the wolf-like part of her can almost smell.

"Mademoiselle..."

She takes a sharp intake of breath, and he falters. She wonders if she's being cruel, and if she is, whether she cares. She isn't sure, but doesn't stop to take the measure of it.

"_Three, two, one..._"

The tower explodes with light and colour, the Marseillaise blaring out from some unknown source. She moves away from the edge, walking wordlessly towards the entrance to the sheltered observatory.

She doesn't look back, but later, after she's brought in the New Year with style, she sees the waiter again, staring at her. He's clutching her wrap.

_Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. All you can do now is hope it gets better._

----------------------

It's these times, with a gun in her hand and an alien on the loose, that she can't help thinking of Jack. She doesn't know what happened to him, if he's alive or dead, if he's met the Doctor again or if he's just a loveable rogue that's picked up every now and again by kindly strangers. She likes to think that wherever he is (and she still means this if he's died) he's still fighting. Still fighting and telling one liners.

The gang her team's rescuing seemed to resent their offer of help until the "big bats" arrived. Now they're huddled together at the window of the grotty little flat as Torchwood quietly do their scientific thing, gazing upwards to the roof of a nearby car park, flinchingly watching great shadows flit and lurch, totally silent, presumably praying for some kind of help or guidance from whatever it happens to be that they believe in. They're still kids, she can't help thinking, almost hating herself for it. They're younger than her by quite a few years, teenagers who haven't seen yet why it is that you shouldn't bate the mad old woman that lives down the road- it only ever ends in tears and guilt. And, in many cases, this one included, dismemberment.

Time to liaise, she decides, putting down a jar of Krillitane oil. Gun slung nonchalantly over her shoulder, Rose walks over to a boy who's clutching a fishing rod and stands next to him, speaking as quietly as she can so as not to disturb the hush of the room.

"Sorry, but what's that for?"

He doesn't look away from the window, his gaze still magnetised to the silhouettes of the Krillitanes.

"Fishing."

She deserved that.

"In London?"

"There's the Thames, isn't there?"

_Have mercy._ She gives up, turning her attention instead to the most responsible looking member of the group, a respectable looking girl in a smart dress, holding a picnic basket full of what Rose hopes is rotten tomatoes. The effect is rather disarming.

"What the Hell have you lot been up to?"

The girl manages to just about draw her attention away from the creatures, looking at Rose's gun with nervous respect.

"My mate Rick..." She trails off.

"Yeah?"

The girl takes a deep breath and manages to look Rose in the eye, carefully avoiding eying the gun.

"My mate Rick told me there was this old woman down the road who turned into a bat at night and I told him he was full of it and he said he wasn't and he'd seen it so we went outside her house at night and looked inside the windows and there was a bat in her living room and..."

The girl grips her shaking straw basket tighter, trying hard to stop the old fleshy fruit from falling out. Rose sighs, still not sure exactly what the tomatoes or the fishing rod were for, but guessing that she might actually rather _not_ know. The girl blushes.

"We didn't think anything would happen."

"You never do, do you?" Rose reprimands her loudly, exasperated. "You don't ever think! For God's sake!"

It takes a moment for her to realise the room's now gone totally silent, and that everyone's staring at her, Torchwood employees and stupid teenagers alike. Her face heats up.

"What? Do _none_ of you watch old horror films? If something seems weird, you just _don't do anything_! And you should _never_ make a Krillitane angry! _Or_ a batty old woman!"

Henry, the new kid on the block at Torchwood, pipes up.

"Or a premenstrual Torchwood employee?"

The room goes silent, a sort of _"Oh no he did not!"_ filling the air, because the others knew better. And soon Henry will too.

Rose walks over to him, gun still slung over her shoulder.

"Do you think that's funny?"

He shrugs, and her anger flares.

"No, I'm serious, do you think you can say that to someone? To a woman? To your _superior_? And hope to get away with it?"

He begins to cautiously slide away from her, but she's too fast for him.

"Do you think I need this right now? Do you think that the best way of getting rid of these things is making smart arsed comments about my hormone cycle?"

Henry backs into the wall, and Rose roughly pushes a hand against his shoulder, righteously indignant, but rather enjoying herself all the same. Being angry gives her something to do.

"No, Henry, it's not. So just shut up and get back to analysing saliva, or whatever else it is we think we can just about trust you to do."

With a final shove, she turns away, smiling evilly. It's hard not to notice the looks of respect in the eyes of her female colleagues, and she only narrowly stops herself from taking a bow. Even the boy with the fishing rod is looking at her with a new kind of admiration.

Suddenly there's a loud smash and the screech of a mutant bat alien, and they're scrabbling for the oil as the teenagers scream. Rose lifts her gun and aims.

_Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. The least you can do is show 'em what you're made of._

----------------------

She damned sure doesn't need to be in a relationship, even if it looks that way to the clowns she works with. She gave no indication to them that she wanted a boyfriend. And anyone who says she needs to relax is wrong. Highly strung doesn't equal sexually frustrated. Not always. And it was most _certainly_ not Jenny from Accounts's duty to set her up with her brother in law, even if he is famously... eligible.

She studies him over the top of her menu, begrudgingly weighing him up against every other man she's ever known. He's very attractive, she'll give him that, and according to Forbes magazine, he's the most "influential" man in the country. His country estate is apparently "to die for" and Harper's Bazaar named him number seven on their top one hundred bachelors list.

Sadly he's not funny, or even remotely exciting. And he hasn't got a time machine. Being a socialite is possibly the most disappointing thing she's ever done.

He notices her staring and smiles, showing all his white teeth. He's very sweet, if perhaps a little desperate.

"What do you think you'll have?"

She closes her menu, placing it in front of her neatly, perpendicular to the wine list (they had the Burgundy).

"The chicken, I suppose."

He nods and puts his menu down as well, then pushes back the famous blonde curls. He's a typical Greek Adonis. Like a little baby Cupid.

"Perfect."

They sit in silence for a moment, looking at each other, neither quite sure what to do. They'd look like two overgrown thirteen year olds at a school disco if they weren't so immaculately dressed.

"You know-"

"Do you-"

They both break off, laughing nervously. He lets her go first, even though she doesn't really have anything to say. She's just making conversation.

"Do you, er... come here often?" She blushes at the cliché, but he grins, eager to please, leaving her to marvel at his teeth once again. They must be bleached. They _must_ be. Or he's part Auton, and she's not going through that again.

"Yes, yes. It's a terribly romantic spot, is it not? And the _Coq au Vin _truly is hard to beat."

"Oh? That's good."

"Yes."

They sit again in silence, staring at their napkins. She wishes a waiter would come. She can't think of anything else to say.

She never used to be bad with men, she thinks, morosely. In fact, she used to be very _good_ with men. Rather too good. Before she and Mickey split, she'd gone straight from relationship to relationship without a thought. Now it's hard to think of something to say to any man that's interested in her (and by "interested" she doesn't mean interested in the way Jacques was _interested_). She'd love to be happy to be in a loving, committed relationship, to _"win her battle"_. But it feels like all she's good for at the moment is shallow, meaningless, unfeeling flings. Which have their merits, but still. She most certainly doesn't have to be on a blind date to get that. And the fact that there's a man out there this handsome that's willing to go out with his brother's wife's boss is a little bit suspect that he might be dreaming of _settling down_.

She watches him watching a couple to his left, who are kissing over the table top, their hands held, stretched across the table, kissing as passionately as normal society will allow, and then some. She sighs, and he turns to look at her, a cloaked sadness in his eyes that she knows rather too well. He's lonely too, and trying to hide it, but not in the way she is.

He really is _very_ attractive, and she feels sorry for him, but she doesn't need this right now. She doesn't need a boyfriend. She doesn't _want_ a boyfriend. It's like an emotional storm, really. An emotional storm that she really has no choice but to ride out.

"Are you..."

He trails off, lamely, and she realises, mortified, that there must be pity in her eyes. She scolds herself for letting it show, but the damage is done.

She's not sure when it was that the atmosphere got tense, but it's happened, and she's going to take advantage of it, if it's her only way out. She should never have agreed to this, never. Not in a million years. It's cruel, and she's been being cruel for too long. She's going to kill every single one of her colleagues for making her do this. Jenny from Accounts won't know what's hit her.

"I think we might be better off as friends."

His face falls, then he nods, quietly. He understands, even if he can't really appreciate it.

They haven't actually ordered yet, but it's already probably time to get the bill.

_Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. Sometimes you think waiting might just be the hardest part._

----------------------

They say that nothing's worth winning without a fight, but frankly, she wouldn't complain.

Of all the ways she could have chosen, this would have been last on the list. She's scared, she's bloody _terrified_, and there's no way out now, even if she _was_ going back. It's never been this bad before. She can hear the unmistakable sounds of the firing of laser beams and the rattles of metal men with metal thoughts, but she hasn't heard the one sound she needs to yet. _He has to come. He'll come, he'll save us all, he has to, we can't do this without him..._

It makes sense, she knows it does. If they made it through once, they were always going to come through again. She almost wonders why the Doctor didn't think of it before. Then again, perhaps he did.

She's lying on the glassy floor, her hair plastered to her face from the outside rain, once again clutching a gun. She never used to have to carry one with him-the sonic screwdriver and his quick thinking got them out every time, and generally without the need to kill anything. She wishes that killing things felt as strange as it used to.

_We can't do this without him..._

Mickey stares at her from across the room, crouched under an abandoned desk, stiff as a board, his gun held upright, James Bond style. She'd laugh if she hadn't seen it so many times before. James Bond impressions aren't so funny when they're literally the _only_ way not to get your arm, or your leg, or your head blown off. She shivers at the memory of the unfortunate ones who didn't get the chance to learn that.

There's a piercing scream, and Rose shoves her fingers in her ears, going a bit mad at the sound.

_No, please, please... __**I**__ can't do this without him..._

"Rose! Oi! Rose!"

She sees Mickey mouthing her name maniacally rather than hears him, her fingers still stuck in her ears, and she stares at him like he's mad, face still lying almost in a puddle, gun abandoned as she tries desperately not to hear whoever's dying screaming.

_"What?"_

He doesn't get a chance to answer, rudely interrupted by half a charred Cyberman hitting the side of his wheelie bin. Rose only just stops herself from screaming as Mickey ducks, trying desperately to shield himself from the metal carcass and the heavy plastic crate. She swallows the sound, letting it die in her throat. She knows she can't afford to notice when he doesn't emerge.

She has to reach the levers, and she has to get someone to help her- she isn't entirely sure how to operate two of them on her own. She can just about see them from her position underneath a desk (_Yvonne's desk_, she can't help thinking), once again shooting at each other, barking orders, killing each other, _worse_, killing her _friends_...

It was always so simple for the Doctor, he could just storm in in the tardis and scare the shit out of whatever they were fighting just by being the _Oncoming Storm_. Her own poncy title has raised little more than smirks and jokes that she's been reading her little brother too many stories amongst co-workers. She'd just get _exterminate_d into oblivion if she tried to use the name _Bad Wolf_ against a dalek. Then again, she did, she hastens to amend her memory, kill the emperor. And about five million others besides. And send millions more into Hell.

She gazes over at Mickey's crate, her gun seeming useless now. She can see one trainer-clad foot sticking out grotesquely from under the plastic. He still isn't moving.

She knows it's do or die (which is probably tantamount to the same thing, really), and if Mickey's not getting up, her team are dead or dying, Pete's trapped upstairs held hostage by a religious group claiming it's the apocalypse, little Joe and her Mum are hidden somewhere and the Doctor... _isn't coming_ (though she's loath to admit it), _she_ has to be the one to make a stand. It all rests in her hands. She's going to have to save the World, alone.

It takes this long to figure out that she's crying. This is the most paralysingly terrifying thing she's ever had to do- cut out her dependence, and throw herself to the lions. It's like taking a shard of glass out of her heart. She always thought he'd come back when she needed him. It appears not. She's got to take away that reliance and depend on no-one but herself, stop herself from needing him.

She stands up slowly, almost regally, tears still running down her face. She won't sob. She has more pride than that, even in the face of _metal men_. If she's going to die, she's going to do it _well_, Goddamn it. She opens her mouth to shout-

"STOP!"

She flicks around and is met instantly by a fiery grin. _Oh, thank God._

He's not just the Oncoming Storm, he's the Oncoming _Tempest_, and he's here at last, so now, quite possibly, everybody lives.

_Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. And as a certain French courtesan once said, the Doctor's worth the monsters._

----------------------

He's always said Hell was that place where you feel nothing, where you don't know if you're alive or dead, an endless sea of oblivion that promises nothing but eternity without a chance of escape. And seeing as she trusts him to know with so much more than her own pointless little life, she supposes that when she's in his arms, she must know where Heaven is.

It is, to be honest, only a beautiful kind of nothingness. The endlessness of nonexistence is maiming, painfully numb, whereas this transiency is kind, precious in the way she hoped when she were a teenager that being a fool in love would be. Meaningful but pointless, all-too-brief, almost overwhelming. She knows in the end it will fail, her heart and her mind and her traitorous body will fail them both, and he won't be able to save her like he did this time. And she thanks whatever's out there controlling love and fate and destiny for that. Not for killing her, slowly, not for each day bringing her closer to death, but for teaching her what it is to value something. If Heaven and Hell are polar opposites, she could never have this last forever, it's too perfect. It is, without a doubt, paradise.

She never wants to leave this room again. She'd be perfectly happy to just lie here and _live_, her head buried near the crook of his neck, breathing him in, hands on his chest as he holds her close, resting against the beat of his endearingly odd right heart. It's this beat, more than anything, and how much she's missed the strangeness of his pseudo-human Time Lord weirdness, that makes her know that she has to take her chance, even if he just freezes up on her, just like she thought, and doesn't reply. But she prays he will. She bites her lip, finding the words, not knowing how to begin to touch this subject with someone so unspeakably... male.

She's shaking just a little as she speaks, and his breath rustles her hair.

"How long?"

He pauses so long she almost thinks he isn't going to tell her.

"Two years. But..." He trails off, and she watches the rise and fall of his chest, eyes wide open. "Rose, you know how I've always said you can explain anything with science?"

She nods, confused.

"Do you know what 'time' is?"

"You mean, like, a dictionary definition?"

"Sort of. Scientifically?"

She shakes her head against his chest. His heart is still beating as slowly, as coolly as ever, whilst her own is thudding against her ribs like a drum. He's not speaking, and she just waits, wondering if he's trying to prove something by pausing. When he speaks again, he sounds like even he thinks it's anti climactic.

"It's the universe expanding. That's it. That's the big mystery. We're all living and breathing because the universe is expanding."

She still doesn't understand. "Into the void?"

He seems to consider it.

"Good question. Maybe. I don't know. But that's not my point."

"Then what is?"

He draws back his head and she looks up a little to look into his eyes. They sparkle like there's some kind of magic behind them, but maybe it's just emotion. That right heart of his has finally begun to speed up beneath her fingertips.

"That I can't measure how long, or how much I've missed you, through how many times the Earth orbited the sun. It's nothing to do with science."

She blinks at him, speechless, and he laughs in delight, despite the slight blush that's risen to his cheeks at words she expects he never thought he'd say.

"Rose Tyler, lost for words! If I'd have known it'd have this effect on you, I would have denied science years ago."

She swats him lightly, then snuggles back against his shoulder, letting out a contented sigh. She's never leaving him again. She's missed him so much she's going to have trouble letting him out of her _sight_.

"You haven't changed at all, have you?"

There's a pause, and the Doctor's arms tighten around her as he leans down, closer to her face. He whispers breathily in her ear, a murmur, his lips brushing her skin. "_You_ have."

She freezes. She wasn't expecting _that_.

She feels more than hears him chuckle.

"Doesn't mean I don't love you, though."

There's really only one way to follow that- she learnt from the best, after all. She feels like she's been holding her breath for two years.

"Quite right too."

He laughs again, and she realises she never wants to hear anything else. She sits up, and looks down at him lying below her, an beatific smile on his face. He's utterly sublime to her. No-one else compares. No-one else will _ever_ compare.

Rose leans over him, lips millimetres from his. She can already taste him in the air, that enticing taste of eternity and something else, something spicy that she's missed for a very long time, that they probably don't have back in _Pete's World_.

She barely needs to breathe the words to finally know that he's hearing her again.

"'Because I love you an' all."

_Tonight, Rose Tyler, is the first night of the rest of your life. So you'd better make it a good one._

----------------------

_I actually LOVE Paris. It's a bit of a problem, actually. I'm not happy unless I'm there. Luckily, I've never thought about falling backwards off the Eiffel Tower, so that's good..._

_Review? Out of the goodness of your heart? For fun? Because you've noticed that I love the word "reticence" more than certain members of my own family? Or that I'm a big fan of the Time Jump (deserves capitalisation, methinks)._

_You know you love me,_

_XOXO... FirstGraveDigger._

_Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it? Damn._


End file.
